🌅 Illusions Show Humans Only Perceive Reality

SOURCE

Neural Correlate Society

WHAT TO KNOW

• A static grayscale ballerina who appears to be moving called “The Static Spin” took the top prize at the 2024 Best Illusion of the Year Contest, beating submissions by scientists, artists, and illusionists from around the globe. Neuroscientist Susana Martinez-Conde co-created the contest 20 years ago with her collaborator, now husband, fellow neuroscientist Stephen Macknik after the two bonded over a shared passion for getting lost in visual illusions. Watch “The Static Spin” on YouTube.

WHY IT MATTERS

• Illusions are perceptual experiences that don't match physical reality, and, contrary to what you might think, they are a fundamental aspect of the way humans perceive the world. Why? Because illusions aren’t simply situations in which the brain gets something “wrong,” rather, they are an intrinsic part of how our brain constructs its perception of the world right from the beginning of the visual pathway, i.e., the retina at the back of your eye.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• The brain doesn’t function in absolute terms; it only knows comparisons. To the brain, there’s no such thing as “black,” “white,” “big,” “small,” etc., it really only knows comparisons between two things. Thus, according to Martinez-Conde, since everything depends on being compared to something else, humans cannot have 100% correspondence between reality and perception, and illusions reveal what happens when that discrepancy is so great that the brain can no longer ignore it. Put differently, humans never have a “direct experience” of reality, only discrepancies perceived by the brain.